Big City Blues (1932)

A country bumpkin goes to the Big City and is promptly fleeced by hardened urban types. The story has been filmed many times, either as comedy or drama. Mervyn LeRoy, however, manages to achieve both in this typical, and typically cynic, "pre-code" effort from Warner Bros. It is really quite amazing how LeRoy switches from satire to melodrama almost on a dime. One minute the Warner stock company is having one of those "wild parties" that every Country Bumpkin-Big City movie should have, and in the next a girl is dead, accidentally killed in a drunken brawl between Humphrey Bogart and Lyle Talbot. The transition is as smooth as silk; suddenly Walter Catlett, as the benign if slightly mercenary cousin, and Joan Blondell, as the floozy with a heart of gold, abandon the premises and cowardly leave poor innocent Eric Linden behind to take the fall. Joan, of course, later regrets her decision but the fact that she instinctively looked out for her own selfish interest is telling. That's how people react in real life and Hollywood movies in 1932 at least bore some resemblance to real life, which is more than can be said for films produced later in the decade. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide